SLAIN CHILD'S DAD FILES $5 MILLION CLAIM AGAINST COUNTY.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO Staff Writer

ROSAMOND -- The father of a 5-year-old boy who authorities said was beaten to death by his mother's boyfriend has filed a $5 million wrongful death claim against Los Angeles County.

Darnell Wheat, the father of Darion Wheat, claims the Department of Children and Family Services was negligent in handling the family's case.

``The negligence of the county was a contributive factor to the child's death,'' Wheat's attorney, Richard Spencer, said Wednesday. ``We believe the county should have picked up on signs of abuse that were not picked up on. Had they done so, they could have prevented the boy's death.''

The claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, was sent to the county last week, Spencer said.

DCFS officials would not comment on the case.

``We do not comment on any litigation. We are not able to discuss any cases due to issues of confidentiality,'' spokesman Stuart Riskin said.

The boyfriend, George ``Bleu'' Tyler, is in jail in Kern County on suspicion of first-degree murder in Darion's death. The little boy's mother, Dionna Wheat, 22, has been charged with felony child endangerment and being an accessory after a felony.

Tyler's mother, Mavis Watson, 45, of Lake Los Angeles, has been charged with being an accessory to a crime and destruction of evidence.

The three have pleaded not guilty.

Authorities said Dionna Wheat originally told them that Darion died after she accidentally ran over him with her car in their Rosamond driveway.

But an autopsy indicated Darion died from blunt-force trauma inconsistent with being run over by a car, Kern County officials said.

Two months before Darion's death, he visited his grandmother, Annie Ray, and told her he was afraid of his mother's boyfriend. The grandmother said she found bruises on Darion's 4-year-old brother and called authorities, but social workers allowed the boys and a toddler brother and infant sister to return to their mother.

Investigators believe Darion was beaten to death Aug. 9, 2006, in his mother's home. Ray had had custody of the older children until December 2005.

Tyler had been under a court order to stay away from Darion and the two younger boys, though not the 8-month-old girl, who is his daughter, a Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services report shows.

Ray said in an interview with the Daily News that she was told the court order was issued when the children were returned to their mother because Tyler refused to be fingerprinted for a background check.

Ray said a social worker told her the order had not been enforced because it was never served on Tyler. Social workers also told her visits to the Buckwheat Avenue home in Rosamond showed no signs a man was living there.

A department status report that Ray obtained after she made her complaint in June said that the children's mother seemed to have a loving relationship with them, that the house was clean when social workers arrived for unannounced visits and that there were no safety concerns involving her.

A sheriff's deputy who accompanied social workers to Ray's home to investigate her abuse report dismissed the bruises on the younger boy's buttocks as minor, Ray said.

Ray said she got custody of the older children in February 2004 after they were found in a car after a police chase that ended in Van Nuys.

A year before, they had wound up in temporary protective custody after they were found at a Mojave motel where Dionna Wheat's boyfriend was arrested, she said.

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